Campbell challenges 'whisperers' to face him

Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat leader, has written off any chance of his party winning the by-election for Tony Blair's vacant seat, but insists the forthcoming poll will not betreated as a test of his increasingly foundering leadership.

Sir Menzies called yesterday on his detractors in the party to "have the guts" to tell him he should go, and rejected the anonymous whispering campaign against him. Dismissing attempts by some colleagues to turn a potential failure to win two by-elections on 19 July into a resignation issue, he tried to reassert his authority with a reshuffle.

He believes the Liberal Democrats have little chance of winning Mr Blair's former Sedgefield seat in the North-east. The Conservatives narrowly beat the Liberal Democrats into third place at the last election and a Tory candidate in the local elections in May polled no votes in the Trimdon ward.

Instead, the Liberal Democrats are putting most of their efforts into the by-election at Ealing Southall, west London, on the same day. "I am not laying down artificial tests of that kind for myself or my party," he said on BBC radio. "What matters is the poll that really counts and that is the next general election."

He added: "I take absolutely no notice of anonymous quotes. If people have got the guts to speak to me face to face that is fine, but I take no notice of what people say anonymously."

Sir Menzies enjoys enormous goodwill among his MPs, who regard him as an elder statesman, and there will be no attempt at a coup, partly because after the removal of Charles Kennedy as leader, another bloodletting could prove counter-productive with voters. But the whispering campaign has continued regardless. "He is a very decent man and has done a lot of work for the party but a lot of colleagues are still nervous," one Liberal Democrat MP said. "Things have quietened down in the last two days but you should not underestimate some of the worries among colleagues." A senior Liberal Democrat source said: "Pressure is coming from all sides now, things have got worse over the last week. They just think he has been carved up by Brown and made to look flat-footed. It is impossible for there to be a coup but people are privately talking about Menzies reflecting over the summer and doing the decent thing."

Last night, as part of a mini-reshuffle, Sir Menzies restored to his front bench the campaigning MP Norman Baker. Mr Baker quit as environment spokesman last year to conduct his own investigations into the death of the government scientist David Kelly. He will shadow Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for the Cabinet Office, Gordon Brown's cabinet "progress chaser".

Jo Swinson, Parliament's youngest MP, was dropped from the Liberal Democrats' "shadow cabinet" as Scottish affairs spokesman. Sir Menzies also moved the party president, Simon Hughes, from his justice brief to become shadow Leader in the Commons, exchanging places with David Heath.

He also demoted his education spokeswomman Sarah Teather following Gordon Brown's decision to split the education department, and put her in charge of universities. The more high-profile portfolio on children and schools went to David Laws.

In a sign that his career may have recovered from the revelation he was having an affair with one half of the Romanian pop duo the Cheeky Girls, Lembit Opik was promoted to take responsibility for business, enterprise and regulatory reform.